DreamCasters Agenda, April 2025
04-06-2025 | 1:00 pm ET via ZOOM
Opening Statement
Welcome to DreamCasters, a DreamForge discussion group devoted to helping our members improve their writing and storytelling through discussion and sharing expertise.
DreamForge News
DreamCaster Dates for 2025
Here are the dates and guests for upcoming meetings
- April 6th, 2025 (Sunday) – Bret Nelson. When Bret Nelson isn’t writing stories, he’s making TV shows and games. He’s worked with Kermit the Frog, Buzz Lightyear, and Conan the Cimmerian. Since we last met with Bret, he has published a novelization of the cult SF movie “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” and the Encyclopocalypse Double Tap “Bog Fiends” and “Murder Garden.” Right now, he’s working on things he can’t talk about (that’s what the contracts say).
- May 3rd, 2025 (Saturday) – Flash Fiction Contest. We’re going to launch a Flash Fiction Contest with a $100 prize. We’ll go over the goals, the limits, and brainstorm ideas. 1,250 words aimed at being publishable in a variety of venues
- June 8th (Sunday) – Alex Jennings. Alex Jennings is a writer/editor/teacher/poet living in Baton Rouge. He was born in Wiesbaden (Germany) and raised in Gaborone (Botswana), Tunis (Tunisia), Paramaribo (Surinam) and the United States. He is the Program Director of DreamFoundry’s Con or Bust and pens a regular speculative poetry review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction called “Chapter and Verse.” In 2022, he was the inaugural recipient of the Imagination Unbound Fellowship at Under the Volcano, a guided writing retreat held annually in Tepoztlan, Mexico. https://www.alexjennings.net
Agenda online: https://dreamforgemagazine.com/dreamcasters-agenda-april-2025/
Member & Author Accomplishments
The full DreamCaster gallery of published stories is online at Airtable.
For Glory and Honor, An LTUE Anthology
Scheduled for February 2026 release, this anthology features a number of DreamCaster Stories, including from Candice Lisle, K.Z. Richards, David Hankins, and Jenny Perry Carr. You can learn more at: https://hemelein.com/catalog/anthologies/ltue-benefit-anthologies/for-glory-and-honor/
Candice Lisle had this to say: “I have sold a story to the LTUE Anthology which will be published in February 2026: “The Army Ration That Saved the Earth”. It’s a fun story. I mean, how can you go wrong with a story that features chocolate?”
David Hankins has an Announcement:
I have a surprise new release! Simple Sabotage: Surviving Bureaucracy with Snark and Style is my sarcastic response to (waves hand vaguely at the world) everything. Inspired by the recently declassified 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual, this small book contains fresh Grimsworld stories along with snarky commentary on how to survive in modern bureaucracy. It made the Amazon #1 new release in Workplace Behavior and top ten in three separate categories.
Our Program – Bret Nelson
Bret Nelson. When Bret Nelson isn’t writing stories, he’s making TV shows and games. He’s worked with Kermit the Frog, Buzz Lightyear, and Conan the Cimmerian. Since we last met with Bret, he has published a novelization of the cult SF movie “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” and the Encyclopocalypse Double Tap “Bog Fiends” and “Murder Garden.” Right now, he’s working on things he can’t talk about (that’s what the contracts say).
Giveaway This Month!
One Lucky DreamCaster in attendance will Win:
“Plan 9 From Outer Space,” by Bret Nelson
In 1957, Ed Wood gathered a cast made up of the once-famous, the once-living, and the altogether unknown. Dime-store flying saucers invaded a surreal patchwork of small sets, found props, and stock footage. The remarkable results did not see a general release until two years later, when Plan Nine from Outer Space finally made it into theaters.
Now Encyclopocalypse Publications maintains their commitment to preserving cinematic genre history through novelizations with their release of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE: THE NOVELIZATION.
In May
In May, we’re going to launch a Flash Fiction Contest with a $100 prize. We’ll go over the goals, the limits, and brainstorm ideas. 1,250 words aimed at being publishable in a variety of venues
Story Prompts
Science Fiction— “Dark Matter Star”
When an astrophysicist joins an expedition to study a newly discovered “Dark Star,” she discovers an entire ecosystem thriving in the star’s twilight corona, sustained by dark matter annihilations. Her breakthrough is complicated by the discovery of an abandoned alien vessel containing a robotic body designed to house a Dark Star intelligence. As corporate interests move to exploit this cosmic phenomenon, the robot activates. Inhabited by “Penumbra,” an ancient consciousness from the Dark Star itself, the robot makes the visitors aware that human experimentation threatens not only the delicate dark matter ecosystem but potentially the fabric of spacetime itself.
Fantasy— “The Infinite Ladle.”
In a drought-stricken village, an herbalist inherits their grandmother’s tarnished copper ladle, discovering it possesses the magical ability to serve endless portions of whatever was last put into it—with each subsequent dip transforming the substance into increasingly potent variations. The herbalist quietly experiments with the ladle’s properties, eventually discovering that if they can acquire a ladle of water from the nearly dry village well, it can be transformed through multiple dippings, creating a substance that can nourish the soil and summon rain.
Disclaimer: These ideas may or may not be original, convergent ideas are common. DreamForge makes no copyright or monetary claim on these story prompts. Have fun.
